Children's Therapy Center, Co.

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Children's Therapy Center, Co. Welcome to Children's Therapy Center, Co.'s [formerly Almaden Valley Children's Therapy Center]!

Bay Area and Monterey Bay pediatric OTs, join us tomorrow for OT Network + Connect!Our topic: child-led therapy and the ...
10/07/2026

Bay Area and Monterey Bay pediatric OTs, join us tomorrow for OT Network + Connect!

Our topic: child-led therapy and the clinical skill behind it. It’s more than letting a child choose an activity and play.

How do we build on their ideas, invite meaningful challenges, and work toward therapeutic goals while keeping them excited and invested? When do we follow, when do we guide, and how do we adjust when our plan doesn’t match theirs?

Bring your questions, experiences, and those moments when you’ve wondered, “Where do I go from here?”

Thursday, October 8 | 12–1 p.m. Pacific
Via Google Meet

When your child’s “lid has flipped,” their thinking and reasoning skills are less accessible. This is not the time for a...
10/04/2026

When your child’s “lid has flipped,” their thinking and reasoning skills are less accessible. This is not the time for a lecture, problem-solving, or demanding an apology.

Here is what to do instead:

🌪️ DURING

1. Regulate yourself first.
Lower your voice, slow your movements, soften your face, and use fewer words. You do not have to feel completely calm to respond calmly.

2. Prioritize safety.
Block unsafe behavior and remove anything dangerous. Hold a clear, calm boundary: “I won’t let you hit. I’m staying close.”

3. Reduce the demands.
Pause the task. Reduce noise, language, questions, and unnecessary sensory input.

4. Offer connection without forcing it.
Stay nearby, but follow your child’s cues. They may want closeness, space, movement, quiet, or help leaving the environment. Do not require eye contact, a hug, or verbal responses.

5. Wait.
Their nervous system needs time. Reasoning, consequences, teaching, and problem-solving can come later.

🌤️ AFTER

1. Reconnect before you reflect.
Let your child know the relationship is safe. Avoid shame, disappointment, or immediately replaying everything that happened.

2. Support their body.
They may need water, food, movement, rest, the bathroom, or quiet time before they are ready for anything else.

3. Repair when needed.
If you raised your voice or became dysregulated too, acknowledge it. Repair teaches more than pretending adults always get it right.

4. Reflect with curiosity.
Later, when everyone is truly regulated, wonder together about what felt hard and what might help next time. Some children will not benefit from verbally revisiting the experience, and that is okay.

5. Make one simple plan.
Choose a realistic support for next time, such as asking for a break, leaving earlier, reducing a demand, or having a sensory tool available.

During dysregulation, focus on safety and connection. Afterward, focus on recovery, repair, and understanding. 🤍

You may have heard someone say that a child has “flipped their lid.” But what does that actually mean?“Flipping your lid...
10/03/2026

You may have heard someone say that a child has “flipped their lid.” But what does that actually mean?

“Flipping your lid” comes from Dr. Dan Siegel’s hand model of the brain. It is a simple metaphor for what can happen when the nervous system detects more stress, sensory input, emotion, or demand than it can manage in that moment.

🧠 When a child is regulated, they have greater access to skills such as:

• Flexible thinking
• Impulse control
• Problem-solving
• Using language
• Considering another perspective
• Managing frustration

🌪️ When their lid flips, the brain prioritizes protection. Those higher-level skills become much harder to access temporarily.

This can look like yelling, hitting, running away, throwing things, or becoming very silly and disorganized. But it can also look like freezing, hiding, going quiet, shutting down, or being unable to respond.

Not every flipped lid looks explosive.

And it is not always caused by the one thing that happened immediately beforehand. A child may already be carrying sensory overload, fatigue, hunger, uncertainty, social demands, or stress from earlier in the day. The final demand may simply be more than their nervous system can manage.

This does not mean the behavior is acceptable or that boundaries disappear. It means the child may not be able to access reasoning, reflection, or learning until their nervous system feels safer and more organized.

When the lid is flipped, adding more words, questions, lectures, or consequences often adds more demand to an already overwhelmed system.

Understanding this changes the question from:

“How do I make this behavior stop?”

to:

“What is this child’s nervous system communicating, and what will help them regain access to their skills?” 🤍

A little Halloween magic is coming to Sensory Storytime! 🎃Join Children’s Therapy Center and Olivia & Daisy Books next W...
10/01/2026

A little Halloween magic is coming to Sensory Storytime! 🎃

Join Children’s Therapy Center and Olivia & Daisy Books next Wednesday for stories and hands-on play led by a pediatric occupational therapist.

We’ll walk a spider web, stack pumpkin cups, create pumpkin faces, feed colorful spiders, and explore a Halloween sensory bin. Each activity offers playful opportunities to practice balance, coordination, fine motor skills, and more.

📍 Olivia & Daisy Books, Carmel Valley
🗓 Wednesday, October 7 at 10:30 AM

Free to attend, no sign-up needed. Bring your little one and invite a friend!

What if the child chose the activity and you figured out how to make it therapeutic?One of my favorite things about pedi...
09/30/2026

What if the child chose the activity and you figured out how to make it therapeutic?

One of my favorite things about pediatric OT is that almost any activity can give us opportunities to work toward a child’s goals.

Our job is figuring out how.

A child walks in absolutely determined to make an origami swan. 🦢

But you’re working on core strength and postural stability.

Great.

Put the instructions on a vertical surface and work in standing.

Move between tall kneeling, half kneeling, squatting, and standing for different steps.

Do part of it in prone, propped on forearms.

Put the paper across the room and scooter, animal walk, or navigate an obstacle to retrieve it.

Same origami swan. Different motor demands.

Another child wants to play restaurant, but you’re targeting bilateral coordination and fine motor skills.

Use tongs to serve food.
Hold a bowl while stirring.
Open and close containers.
Cut pretend food.
Write down orders.
Carry a tray.

Their idea just gave you opportunities to work on bilateral coordination, dexterity, visual-motor skills, motor planning, and more.

We don’t always have to redirect a child away from what they want to do so we can “work on their goals.”

Follow their idea. Then use your clinical reasoning to figure out how to embed the challenge they need within it.

The child brings the play.

We bring the therapeutic lens. 🤍

We often talk about regulating ourselves before helping a child regulate. But what happens when you do not actually feel...
09/29/2026

We often talk about regulating ourselves before helping a child regulate. But what happens when you do not actually feel calm?

Sometimes what I do is “act as if.”

I soften my voice even though my heart is racing.
I slow my movements even though my body feels tense.
I use fewer words even though I want to explain everything.
I relax my face, drop my shoulders, and lengthen my exhale.

This is not pretending that I am fine or suppressing what I feel. It is intentionally choosing actions that communicate safety while giving my own nervous system a chance to catch up.

Children do not need perfectly regulated adults. They need adults who can notice when they are triggered and respond with intention instead of adding more intensity to the moment.

And sometimes, the calm actions come first. The feeling follows. 🤍

If I am too activated to offer that steadiness, it is also okay to pause, step away when it is safe, or ask another adult to take over. Regulation does not require perfection.

When we talk about sensory processing in schools, why do we so often limit the conversation to behavior and regulation?T...
09/28/2026

When we talk about sensory processing in schools, why do we so often limit the conversation to behavior and regulation?

Those matter. But sensory processing also affects how a child perceives touch, senses their body’s position and movement, and uses that information to act. That can show up throughout the school day.

👉Proprioception gives the brain information about body position and force. Differences here may contribute to pencil pressure that is too light or too heavy, or difficulty judging how much force to use with classroom materials.

👉Vestibular processing provides information about head movement and position. It contributes to balance, postural control, and keeping the eyes steady while the head moves. Think about sitting upright, moving through a crowded classroom, or shifting attention between the board and a paper.

👉Tactile perception helps a child identify and interpret touch. It matters when handling small materials, finding an item by feel, and knowing how an object is positioned in the hand.

👉And praxis and bilateral integration draw on sensory information to plan movements and coordinate both sides of the body. Think cutting, managing supplies, or learning a new playground game.

None of these school difficulties automatically means a child has a sensory integration challenge. That’s why we assess.

But if sensory processing can affect these parts of a school day, how can we say, “We don’t address sensory in schools”?

What could change if our evaluations looked beyond regulation and our interventions targeted the functions affecting each student’s participation?

Dear parent bringing your child in for their first OT evaluation,You don’t need to prepare them to impress us.You don’t ...
09/27/2026

Dear parent bringing your child in for their first OT evaluation,

You don’t need to prepare them to impress us.

You don’t need to practice the things you think we might ask them to do.

And you definitely don’t need to apologize if they don’t follow our directions, need to move, refuse an activity, get frustrated, need a break, or want you close by.

We want to meet your child exactly as they are.

As pediatric occupational therapists, we’re not just looking at whether your child CAN do something.

We’re watching how they approach something new. How much effort it takes. What they do when it gets hard. What their body is doing. What strategies they come up with. What support makes a difference. What they enjoy. And what makes them light up.

And we need you, too.

An evaluation gives us a small window into your child. You know what getting dressed on a Tuesday morning looks like. You know which foods they’ll eat, what happens when it’s time to leave the playground, how homework goes, what they avoid, what they seek out, and the things they can do at home that they may never show us in an evaluation room.

Tell us those things.

Standardized assessments give us valuable information, but they’re only one piece of a much bigger picture.

Your child doesn’t need to prove that something is hard.

And they don’t need to have a “perfect” evaluation for us to understand them.

Our job is to get curious.

About their strengths.
About the things that are harder.
About what might be getting in the way.
And about what could make participation in their everyday life easier.

So please, don’t worry about helping your child have a “good” evaluation.

Just bring us your child.

That’s exactly who we want to meet. 🤍

A pediatric OT

09/26/2026

A sensory questionnaire is useful. It tells us how a parent or teacher perceives a child’s experiences. But on its own, it cannot tell us which underlying sensory and motor functions may be contributing to a child’s difficulties.

A thorough sensory evaluation looks at sensory perception and reactivity. Can a child identify where they were touched? Sense the position of their joints without looking? Judge how much force to use? Do certain sensations feel overwhelming, or does the child respond less than expected?

These findings shape treatment. Without them, even an experienced therapist may be guessing.

Parents: If your child is receiving OT for sensory concerns, ask what was assessed beyond questionnaires and clinical observations, and how the findings are guiding treatment. You deserve a clear answer.

Address

6501 Crown Boulevard, Suite 100A
San Jose, CA
95120

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

+14086010993

Website

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